The Basic Elements of Mass Psychology

All of us to some extent are students of life. We all begin in childhood, especially when we witness our parents or family in general argue with each other over all kinds of matters. An extremist by nature, I have found that the best way to get to the bottom of anything is to do just that - dig down as deep as I can and try to uncover the foundations upon which any argument rests. I did this professionally for thirty years as a documentary film and television producer.

I started with ethology, which is the study of animal behavior and worked my way up from there, working with Stone Age Bushmen in the Kalahari studying the actual effects of animism on a hunter/gatherer life style; then worked my way up each subsequent level of our evolving consciousness - through shaman-based Bronze Age agricultural tribalism, Iron Age industrial craftsmanship and rigid scriptural dogma; Middle Eastern Sufism, Hindu yoga and Buddhist Zen. In that long process of both self and collective discovery I ended up with a lot of basic conclusions about our current Steel Age of scientific determinism and religious argument that one does not find in standard text books. The fruit of all that work is published in my book "Psyche-Genetics" which I hope you may end up reading one day.

Anyway, here is a bit of base knowledge about ourselves that you might have already figured out for yourself.

Three fundamental Archetypes of Human Consciousness.

On top of the pile are the most blessed among us;
The most physically attractive.
The most industrially accomplished
The most courageous
The most loving
The most artistically accomplished
The most visionary
The most creatively inventive.

In the middle of the pile are the bulk of us, who can only marvel at the best, be thankful that they exist as living examples of what we all can be like and try our own level best to be like them.

At the bottom of the pile are the misfits, all struggling with some form of natural distortion - some applying super-human efforts to rise above their handicaps, and in that process rising above mere mortal level. Others are trying their best to hold their own, or sinking into apathy. Some, too many alas, turn rogue.